News from EPI ›Newsflash: $7.25 minimum wage important as first step

$7.25 minimum wage important as first step

There is broad support for raising the Federal minimum wage, which has now been stuck at $5.15 since 1997, to a level that will provide needed relief to low-wage workers and their families. But how much of a raise is needed to accomplish this goal?

In a new Economic Policy Institute Policy Memo, senior economist Jared Bernstein and policy director Ross Eisenbrey describe the now two-year-old proposal to bring the minimum to $7.25 by 2009 as an important measure that Congress should pass as a first step. As a second step, the authors recommend raising the 2009 target to $8.00 and adding indexing to prevent the minimum wage from being eroded by inflation again.